Love & Resolution
by BlueStarlightWriter
Summary: A small one-shot between my OC, Masella, and lovable Fane, and is going to be a late chapter of the fanfiction I am currently writing for them.


Sincerity in Muteness - One Shot

Her intentions lay heavy on the oncoming storm that lurched the bow of her Lady Vengence. The livewood groaned under the immense strain, though it was an ancient frigate, far more sea-worthy than any other vessel on the darkened tides.

Of course, her own mindset was quite similar to the storm. Destructive if alone, beautifully chaotic if not tempered. For that was how she was, the mute elf of two faces. One thought immortal, the other altogether mundane. A musician and entertainer to some. A mute puppeteer to others.

She uncorked her small ewer and gulped the last traces of poison. It only took a moment for it to enter her bloodstream and slip deeply into her thumping black heart. Then, the old crone's magic spun like golden silk through her decrepit body.

Sinew once frayed returned to the grace of a youthful maiden: supple, strong, lasting. Even across the water she saw her reflection bloom into a rosy tint over the balustrades, so unlike the bloodless corpse her countenance had originally undertook.

To be undead and elf, it took effort. Yes, so much effort. One forgetful night might lead to her visage foundering indefinitely. Then she would never feel the warmth of another in an embrace. Never taste the salty brine of the evening wind nor smell the rife scent of evergreen beneath the ship's deck.

That was one thing she never fully understood: the true imitation of a gladed wilderness that was so close and so far from her once home that it often pulled at her heartstrings like fingers plucking the cords to her own lute. It had been so many centuries... she had almost forgotten the realm of Elvendom. Of course, it wasn't reminiscence that brought her to the call of her blood king, Tir Cendelius', council, even if he never truly answered her call and that it was her own mind conjuring wisdom.

No, it was of her undead lover. Fane, the Eternal. Since his realisation of her fully fleshed body, he had found a quiet niche somewhere in the livewood's heart. He would not come when called. And it had been three dawns since.

She should have known jealousy would rise upon her discovery, for he like herself was undead, only she could still share the pleasure of mortals. He was only bare-faced bone, cold to the touch - like the grave.

"Though," she thought, when her focus shifted to the thunderous clash of the waves on the horizon, "despite his flesh-less-ness, he still means everything to me. And we can still share a life together, even if we must use source to do it, so why does he ignore me still?"

Turning away from the horizon, she returned to the creaking deck pooled to the ankles in sea-water and fell into the darkness of whistling boards and hammocks.

The resonance of her damp feet rose and descended with each tumble of the ship, causing her arms to latch onto nearby banisters for support. When she finally settled within the lower hold, familiar noises reached her delicate ears.

The scrawl of a quail quill on parchment. Mutters of a dead language rehearsed in varying degrees of sharpness, illustrating a vast frustration. One she instantly could name. And the unmistakable scrawl of a certain Cranley Hewburt's Encyclopedia.

Masella drew her lips taut - an attempt to smother any mirth from her features, if solely to quench the sudden burst of amusement that bubbled in her chest. She was meant to feel guilty. She was meant to show it, even though her newly-refueled heart leapt upon the mere hearing of him.

Cupping the edge of a doorway locked, she hesitated for a brief moment before wracking her knuckles across the frame.

"Bugger," was the inner response. Her knuckles clattered again. Further frustrated curses seeped through the lock. Then she finally had her welcome. "Yes, alright. I'm coming! What is the meaning of disturbing me this time-?"

The creak of the opening door brought with it some subtle clarity within the inner darkness: a face made solely of intricately crafted bone, though his brow-ridges seemed creased in displeasure.

"Oh. It's you."

Masella attempted a smile, though it only caused the door to flash shut. If not her throwing a book in the gap between, she most certainly would have been alone once more.

The disappointment in his tone had her advance falter. "I'm afraid I'm not in the mood for company. Especially from your kind. If you can be described as a kind, or perhaps a half-breed like our ship's captain, Malady? At least she has the decency to show her true features."

Masella opened her mouth, and shut it.

He huffed. "Silence. That's all I ever get. Even for a mute you're infuriatingly quiet. What? Did you come to gawk, or do you have an actual need?"

"Fane," she signed. "I came to apologise. You have to understand-"

"Understand? As if you mortals were not infuriatingly complex as it is?!" The skeleton lurched backward at her sudden touch across his cheekbone, shrinking into his cloak. "No- no, d-don't."

"Why? Please-"

"Damnation mortal, do you not understand? Do you acquire a great deal of comfort in caressing cold bone? I'm afraid it's rather lacking for me. Like rutting clams." He drew his fingers to his brow and clutched the ridge where his nose-sockets joined, easing the tension from his shoulder-blades. "It's all well and good for you to try to caress me and pretend its pleasant, but I'm afraid we must agree that it feels all too empty. It makes it difficult knowing you had the answer to my turmoil, especially when we tried to be- well, I suppose that doesn't matter now, does it?"

He traced where her fingers had been with his own, attempting to feel for any warmth to encompass the extremities he lacked. He sighed in realising the inevitable truth. "I never thought I could miss something so mundane. Yet here I am, mourning."

"But there is a way for us to be together. You said-"

"I know what I said, dear Lessa. But I fear my mistrust for you right now won't call for it. I thought you trusted me, inexplicably. I suppose I should have known before entering our agreement that trust was a fickle affair for you mortals. But I now know the signs. I'm sure I can hinder any future disappointments between us. Lies being one of them."

He went to shut door again. She wedged her foot in-between and took his cuff. There her hand connected with gleaming finger-bones, all of which seemed far more colder with his lack of an answer. His fingers curled naturally over hers, and when a tear cascaded down her cheek, mixing with salty seawater, he drew a finger up to catch it.

"Tears?" he whispered, frowning down at his hand. "You're... crying?! Is this normal? You... good heavens, the book never mentioned what to do when a mortal cries, I-"

Her hands dug into his cape before another word could be uttered, and her face sought relief in his shrouded shoulder.

She felt a weight on her waist - when his arms wound loosely there - bound but unsure. In the quiet darkness of a groaning ship Masella managed to hiccup a few sounds that, though not truly in any language, managed to shake some of the anxiety from her throat.

Raising her green eyes to meet his black sockets, she daintily pecked his chin and signed, "Will you forgive me, Fane?"

A silence hung between them like cheap tapestry, and she found her hands fumbling on their own accord. "I never told anyone about what I am. No one. I could never trust anyone. They would've killed me like other source-bearers, or found a way to torture me, and I know how unfair it is that I have flesh and you do not, but what I am, I don't even know myself."

She took a shuddering breath and continued. "I begged a witch to do this to me when I had the plague so very long ago. I'm not sure how she did it, or why she accepted, but where you feel nothing, I do. I feel everything. I need no air to breath yet feel my lungs constrict when I drown. I need no food yet feel the ache my stomach makes when it shrivels without it. I need no water, yet again know what it is like to yearn for it when I'm locked in a cellar for days on end because a lonely old man who hates elves thinks I will die in the dark beneath his cottage. And I never die. I heal, but healing takes months, and I always remember the feelings I felt when they happened.

"I care for you, Fane. I truly do. If you want what I have, I promise I will try to hunt the crone responsible, for I cannot bear the thought of you hating me. Not for this. Not when I would much rather have you feel me in your embrace, then know that I am nothing to you."

"You are not... nothing. You will never be nothing."

"But you cannot feel me-"

"No, I cannot. But that does not mean that my fondness doesn't surpass the material. Do I yearn to touch you? It'd be a lie to say I didn't. But it wasn't your appearance I learned to value, but your inner worth. Your mind, your joy, your stubbornness, trying as they can be sometimes."

"So you're not mad?"

"Oh dear heart, I'm not mad. Disappointed, maybe. I thought with everything we've been through you might aspire to be honest with me. That is the foundation of a relationship, yes? Though perhaps Eternal affairs are simpler than I anticipated."

Masella wiped the remaining sadness from her cheeks and smiled meekly. "Not so different I do not think. I never wanted to hurt you, is all."

"And thus in your naivety created an argument that could've been solved days ago. Indeed, a very good idea on your part. Although I do have very valuable research on relationship turmoil that will prove useful in the future, I'm sure."

"Oh? What like?"

"Why to hide in my cabin for three days and wait for you to come to your senses, of course! Why else would I be here, if not to let you come to your own conclusions? Though, I have missed your company. Even Eternals require some companionship from time to time. Even from you much lesser folk."

Masella drew her lips into a pout and glanced behind her. "If I am too much of a lesser to keep you company, then maybe I should go-"

"No, wait, I never meant that-"

"Then perhaps you might pop your ego for a night and settle with me?"

The Eternal huffed, but there was a touch of mirth in his tone. "I fear my ego is inpenetrable, but I would welcome the chance to be with you tonight. Even I must admit that my nights have been rather lonely as of late."

"If you would like," she signed after lightly kissing his cheekbone, "we can try your theory on intimacy. What were you saying before all this? That we might be able to touch?"

"Yes. In theory. Through Source. I've studied several texts and I'm almost certain it could work."

She felt her heart leap at the opportunity, and rushed them both inside his chamber before he had a chance to lock the door behind them. "What must I do?" she asked, throwing herself giddily onto his feather bed before he had a chance to fall in beside her.

She threw her legs over his waist and tied her hair back, watching him writher beneath her thighs in an attempt to appear comfortable. She took his hands and threw them across her hips, then bent his skull up to meet her eyes, which seemed to captivate him in place.

She brushed her lips across his jaw and giggled. "Is this position permissible, Fane?"

The skeleton cleared what she supposed would have been his throat. "Y-yes, it will do. I, err, think."

"And we need to trade source?"

Fane froze beneath her. He quickly turned his skull into his pillow, staring distantly across the room. "Confound it, Lessa. This isn't a game! Do you understand the consequences should either of us take too much- the implications alone are-"

"Astronomical?" Any humour in her face fell as soon as she realised his face wouldn't meet hers. "Hey," she signed, tipping his chin her way. "Hey. I know. I want this just as much as you. You can trust me."

She took his hand and pressed it against her breast, just over her eagerly thumping heart. "What do I need to do?"

He shifted beneath her. "You must first relax. Quieten your mind and let any tension ease from your body."

Masella let out a shuddering breath, and felt herself sag into his hold. He took her fingers, sliding them into the hood that concealed him so that his cold-stricken bone became illuminated in candelight.

The air, at first cold between them, begun to feel incredibly warm on her skin, as warm as the sun on the dunes of the Namesless Isle in which she had first met him. She let the memory coax her into a cautious surrender, as the thunderstorm of the outside became a distant, quiet rumbling that neither could longer hear. His face shifted between the firelight and shadows, and as their cascade became hazy, blending into one another, she noticed tiny motes of Source twinkling from him. The motes swirled together to take the form of newly woven flesh. A weak mirage born of Source of the Fane he used to be, but even in its brevity, it caused her fingers to tremble against him.

"I never dreamed I would have the opportunity among your kind," he whispered, stroking her face with a dazzle of incredibility in his ethereal eyes. "But it seems I was wrong. And to now know the unimaginable is just mere moments away-"

He kissed her knuckles and inhaled a shuddering breath. "-Thank you."

"Fane," she mouthed; his smile snuffing away any lingering doubt from her mind.

"I know, dear heart. This notion does not come without risk. But... I do trust you, Lessa."

"As I trust you."

His ethereal form quivered in a sudden abundance of Source. Heat swept across her body, protecting her from any lingering draft that might have whistled in from the storm. The elf dipped into his embrace and curled compliantly into his gleaming spirit, unable to gaze away from the beauty that such a natural thing could inspire.

"Take me. Just a bit. Just enough."

Her fingers twitched in anticipation. She felt her chest constrict with an eerie emptiness. The sweat of a sudden fever caught her brow. Her soul yearned to connect with all the Source he had to offer. Her stomach lurched at the prospect, having felt altogether empty and her arms oddly weak.

Masella glanced over Fane like a morsel ready to be devoured, although when she returned to him, he held her gaze with an unyielding concentration. By the way his fingers dug into her hips and the way his breath remained held behind a twisting grimace, she knew his restraint was fraying.

He was so very vulnerable. All it would take was for one irresponsible slip and her body would absorb all that he was. His essence. His mind. His soul. Everything. And he would cease to be.

"Lessa."

Her gaze slipped through her own haze to clear on the intensity of his own.

She slipped her hands around him and allowed the inevitable rush of his Source to take her into an eerily peaceful dream. Away from the scents of ashen livewood and the hollow echoing thump of tumbling waves against the bow of the Lady Vengence.

Instead into a world of intimate memory.

~~o~~

Masella woke to dusty stone shelves circling a long-lost academy.

Her gasp resonated along walls etched in pulsing veins of light, circling higher and higher to no apparent end. Most of the hall lay concealed in shadows, with herself and half a bookcase illuminated in a witch-craft green, dispelled by an angular lantern cut deeply into an obsidian altar.

Curled into blankets on a cushioned sofa, she felt warm despite a frosty chill encompassing the atrium, for just as she had remembered when witnessing Eternal ruins, the only material to encompass her surroundings was cold, iridescent stone.

Her feet slipped from her duvets, landing onto a ground smooth and level beneath her twitching toes. She twirled around the hall, taking in every detail, from tapestries stirring from their joists like frigate sails caught in a dusk-lit harbour to sunlight beaming through windows rounded into a ceiling that she was sure moments ago was nonexistent.

It was not long before her fingers shifted between the bookcases, for her own unheeded curiosity knew no bounds. The leather beneath her fingertips was surprisingly soft, much unlike the burnt pages of journals she had found in ruins once upon a time.

So engrossed, was she, that she never felt the presence of another not far behind her, until the tap of a cane clanged against ancient stone, piercing her ears with a loud clang.

"You can grab me all you like, mortal, but a man's books? Is nothing sacred?"

Her fingers stiffened. Her focus shifted to the glass encasing the tomes, and she immediately noticed a tall robed shadow grow incredibly still whilst leaning on a tri-crowned staff.

Masella inhaled the courage she needed and gradually turned.

There her lover stood, leant against a desk with his staff poised between his thighs, partly concealed behind a long robe of silken green. It was not the majesty of his robe that intrigued her so, however, but the human-like face half-hidden by a cowl patterned with hieroglyphs. As a waxy blue pallor, his skin glinted when touched by the lanternlight, yet so attractively marbled was it, that he seemed far more like a tombed effigy poised for nobility than the living, breathing Eternal she had grown to care for.

Half his face remained concealed; down-cast that it was. What she could see were his lips; at first curled in anxious humour, to then gradually twitch in her silence. His fingers drummed into his staff, while he quickly cleared his throat. "I suppose I must seem strange to you."

He slowly approached her, his staff clicking rhythmically against the stone. "I had hoped my visage wouldn't disappoint you, or worse, cause you to fear me. I must admit, I'd often wondered how you would react to witnessing the real me. I imagined a number of reactions, though never knew you would favour silence. At least, well, you understand."

Masella remained absolute in her disquiet, neither attempting to sign a response or betray her intentions in any type of notable gesture. She merely stared at him, her throat dry and breath held.

Fane gently cupped her left arm. He took one last step, placing his staff against his stacks of texts to take her other arm and smile. "I'm still me, Lessa, no matter what manner of face I don."

A disturbing thought occurred to him. He looked away, scowling down at the ground. "Perhaps you would prefer something else? If you would like, I could find an elven mask. You might feel more comfortable with one of your own kind. Or maybe you might prefer my bonish physique after all. We could always return to reality. I'd await you there as always."

Time passed. She noticed his will begin to fray and his face fall into dismay. "Please, mortal. Say something."

Masella opened her mouth to speak. Then, she closed it, instead lifting her hand to trace the light circular indents his skin made which cascaded across her fingertips like well-loved leather. All that came to mind was one word. Beautiful.

She touched him. She felt him. No longer was there a cold, empty presence to register as Fane but a warm and inviting suppily-fleshed being that looked down upon her with such affection that she was sure she would weep if not so stunned by his presence.

There was a scent to him. Not one of oily mold that often weighted his person during an adventure in the rain, but of a newly pleasant scent. It was floral. Lavender, hindered by a spoil of chalk, ink and parchment, and the sour metallic tang of Source. And yet his voice remained utterly the same.

Her lips creased into a smile. Masella found herself leaping into his arms with a joyful giggle hiccuping her throat. Fane. It was her Fane! She could finally feel the love of another when she slept. One that could fill the void her lover initially lacked when he pressed against her during long nights on a frigate.

Before he could register what happened, stumbling back with her in his arms, she slipped away to pepper his cheeks with kisses, causing him to fall into his desk and for his tomes to scatter across the floor.

Fane chuckled, holding her face still with his hands.

"You!" she mouthed, her delight mirroring his own. "You look... I can't believe it. It worked!"

"Yes, so it did."

Masella glanced around the atrium, finding herself shaking with glee. "This place, it was your academy? It all seems so real. You seem so real. I can hardly believe it."

His chest swelled with pride, eagerly following her glances. "Yes, I dare say the architecture of this place really was really quite ingenious, if I do say so myself. The fact that it stands to this present day after thousands, if not millions of your years, really does show the ingenuity of my people. A shame, really, that interactive memories of my past are all I have to remember them by."

"Interactive?"

"Yes, it is a memory, but I have the power to mold it into how I see fit, allowing us our privacy, as it where."

"So what sparked it? Why not a meadow in the sun or on the Lady Vengeance in your bed? Why in a cold library? Not that I mind. This place is incredible."

"Because even as an immortal I occasionally happen upon bouts of nostalgia, and really is there no more intimate place than where one is familiar to perform acts that require a lot of trust? You wanted to be intimate."

He gestured around the atrium with deliberate slowness. "All this is me. The heart of me. Behind the bone and marrow I'm everyone of these books, the very earth beneath our feet and the thrum of Source between us. This memory was and is my life. Even my family never held relevance here. No one did, but me and my research."

Masella followed his gestures, appearing vividly shaken. She knew her lover was a selfish being, but never truly realised how much of his work obscured those that cared for him. Of course, if he ignored his family to the point of carelessness, what was to say that she would not meet the same fate?

Because he's changed? Because I am not an Eternal? He had a wife and child in the past, ones he sometimes spoke of with affection and regret, and even if the former spiked some ounce of jealousy that took many moments to quench, should he have not had one item in his personal space of them? A painting? A child's toy? Even a letter?

But there was nothing. Perhaps that was deliberate. Perhaps the guilt of leaving them to the horrors of his King when he was stricken of his titles and thrown into a pit to be forgotten weighed too heavily on his mind to conjure any familiar fragment or memento. Perhaps he did want to forget to stem the pain, or maybe the atrium was his only place of tranquility. If so, it would explain why nothing of regret resided there. He was unveiling his truest vulnerability to her alone.

Fane quipped uneasily under her silence, "I suppose to you it must appear a rather lonely existence."

She gradually shook her head. "You're a scholar. Expecting otherwise would be silly, I think. You always will be this place, but that never means something new cannot be added."

She plucked a ribbon from her hair, tucked it inside a tome and returned it to a dusty bookshelf beside them. A blue thread hung from the bind, barely noticeable unless one properly looked.

It was a small gesture but a necessary one. He may never have held personal mementos in his atrium of self-wonders before. It may have made him uncomfortable, but if he was serious in her being a part of his life, he would need to become accustomed to such acts, or fear losing her entirely. "Maybe even a little of me can have a place here."

She felt his fingers stiffen round her waist; noticed the way his lips quirked at the ribbon's placement, as if it was a troubling oddity that needed correcting. Sighing, Masella flicked his shoulder and pulled him into a light kiss.

When they parted Fane's eyes remained completely enthralled on her alone, glazed and slightly dazed that he was, and her ribbon was altogether forgotten.

"I'd love to see more of your memories, Fane, but weren't we brought here for something else?"

"Something else? Oh! You mean- yes, well, what we are about to reinact could be considered a manner of learning, so theoretically you could consider this a lecture in the making between cherished colleagues."

Masella suddenly frowned. "Colleagues?"

"Yes. Is that not accurate? I suppose given all we have been through, 'friends' would also appropriate nomenclature."

Masella bit back a grin, taking him into her arms and ceasing any further rambling with a confidently placed kiss. Source between them begun to kindle like hearth-fire, warming the elf's skin in soothing circles that followed his hands along her back. She, too, allowed her fingers to roam across his silken robes, her touch growing bolder as their kiss deepened, to the point that when tongues begun to dip and swirl to each other's rhythms, her hands had reached inside his clothes, peeling away the last sashes and shroud from his shoulders so that her lips could dip to nibble the hard bone of his clavicles.

His fingers remained gently twitching as he sighed. In mere heartbeats he had huskily whispered her name, his back arched to the bookcases surrounding them and his mouth resting on her hair, mouthing words of comfort. Though slightly foreign his body chemistry was, the light hairs tickling her chin were completely familiar. Riddled, was he, in earthy tones that reminded her of the wooded glades of home. Of raunchy trysts in meadows when she was young and of adrenaline-fueled games played in late hours of wilderness.

When her face rose to his he swiftly bent her neck, tossing her hair to one-side and lavishing the skin beneath her ear in sloppy kisses and patterns with his tongue that instantly caused her breasts to press firmly into him, begging him onward in her own way; her lips pursing and brows scrunching with mews of pleasure.

As if the sea had caught their memory their bodies caught a rhythm of gentle, passionate rocks, with necks tilted - calling gods - and toes curling in a heated embrace. Garments were shed and forgotten. Birds in rookeries above fluttered and flew. Sunlight eventually faded into hazy nothingness, leaving the two of them alone in shadows.

When the dream itself finally forsook them, as did the mornings and afternoons of what felt to be a hundred memories experienced in bliss, their clothes had been replaced by duvets, and the stone floor of an ancient world had been traded for a feathered bed of ruby colouring.

Their souls had returned to inevitable reality, with their ears full of creaks and groans of drifting wood, and their walls finally lifting to become sanded livewood. And her lover's visage once again returned to the lifeless caress of hard bone, and Masella found herself curled against it. Her breathing was even, her breasts hugged close to his ribs, and all she could feel was contempt. Not empty by the lack of flesh to comfort her. Not frustrated by a night of confusion or malevolence. Just contempt, whilst her lover hummed her to sleep.

Her life may not have been perfect. Her lover certainly not so. But she was contempt, and in a world were Void-woken tested their mortality daily, and with the gods themselves close to causing Armageddon, it was the little things she needed to be thankful for. And she was thankful for her lover, Fane, as the Lady Vengeance raised her sails and tipped away from the storm; shifting instead into a clear horizon.

XXX

Based on a fanfiction I'm writing about a mute undead elf and Fane the Eternal. Enjoy and please leave a comment if you liked it.


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